Philip Jones Griffiths Dies
Philip Jones Griffiths, Photographer, Dies at 72
Philip Jones Griffiths (February 18, 1936 – March 18, 2008) was a Welsh photojournalist known for his coverage of the Vietnam war.
“ The first picture of his I ever saw was during a lecture at the Rhyl camera club. I was 16 and the speaker was Emrys Jones. He projected the picture upside down. Deliberately, to disregard the subject matter to reveal the composition. It's a lesson I've never forgotten. "
—Griffiths on his idol, and later coworker, Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Griffiths was born in Rhuddlan. He studied pharmacy in Liverpool and worked in London as the night manager at Boots The Chemist in Piccadilly while also working as a part-time photographer for the Manchester Guardian. He started working as a full time freelance photographer in 1961 for the Observer, traveling to Algeria in 1962. He arrived in Vietnam in 1965, working for the Magnum agency.
Magnum found his images difficult to sell to American magazines, as they concentrated on the suffering of the Vietnamese people and reflected Griffiths's view of the war as an episode in the continuing decolonisation of former European possessions. He was able to get a scoop that the American outlets liked, photographs of Jackie Kennedy vacationing with a male friend in Cambodia. The proceeds of these photos enabled him to continue his coverage of Vietnam and to publish Vietnam Inc. in 1971. The book had a major influence on American perceptions of the war, and became a classic of photojournalism.
In 1973 Griffiths covered the Yom Kippur War. He then worked in Cambodia from 1973 to 1975.
In 1980 Griffiths became the president of Magnum, a position he then held for five years.
In 2001 Vietnam Inc. was reprinted with a foreword by Noam Chomsky.
Subsequent books have included Dark Odyssey, a collection of Griffiths's best pictures, and Agent Orange, dealing with the impact of the US defoliant Agent Orange on postwar generations in Vietnam.
Aged 72, Griffiths succumbed to cancer on March 18, 2008.